Planting the Seeds of Social Justice in STEM Learning and Teaching

The Role of Educators in Cultivating Future Question Askers, Problem Solvers, and Ethical Citizens
Your mission is to craft questions that will help you design an investigation to grow students into
question askers, problem solvers, and ethical citizens. The investigation should be: (1) geared
towards mid- to upper-elementary students, (2) related to food insecurity, and (3) connected with
select Pennsylvania State Standards. Remember to focus on the questions. At this point, try not to focus
on identifying or designing activities in which to engage students. Instead, capture the questions
that arise as you think about the design process and that you might want to ask your students to
uncover understandings based on the provided materials.

Online Materials
All materials, as well as the presentation slides and this handout, are available at:

http://bit.ly/stem-social-justice
Feel free to use the graphic organizer to help you orient your questions between social justice, the
Pennsylvania State Standards, and the provided materials.

Pennsylvania State Standards in Environmental and Ecological Sciences

The following Pennsylvania State Standards were selected as guideposts for you to draw upon to
help you craft your questions while planning a STEM investigation that will support the growth
and development of your students.
4.4.4.A. Agriculture and Society Describe the journey of local/global agricultural commodities
from production to consumption.
4.5.4.A. Humans and the Environment Identify how people use natural resources in sustainable
and non-sustainable ways.
Science Practices Standards Drawn from Standards 4.4.4.E. and 4.5.4.F.
1. Ask questions about objects, organisms and events.
2. Understand that all scientic investigations involve asking and answering questions and
comparing the answer with what is already known.
3. Plan and conduct a simple investigation and understand that dierent questions require
dierent kinds of investigations.
4. Use simple equipment (tools and other technologies) to gather data and understand that
this allows scientists to collect more information than relying only on their senses to
gather information.

Graphic Organizer